This is one of the first phonemic awareness activities I am posting for pre-readers. If you try to introduce this activity and your little one is not quite getting it, go back to some of the earlier reading posts on the “getting started” page and practice more activities similar to the earlier skills because your little one may need more time playing with words before he/she is ready to listen for the beginning sounds in words.
Listening for beginning sounds, generating beginning sounds, and identifying which letter makes that sound are three SEPARATE skills. So today, we are going to start with the basics of introducing phonemic awareness (which is the awareness that words are made up of sounds).
I created an activity in which you will talk about all the objects in the picture so that you can label the objects with your child BEFORE attempting to listen for the sounds that the words start with. Once children are able to “play” with words enough to hear sounds. They usually hear the beginning sound first, then the ending sound, and then the middle sound(s) eventually. It takes A LOT of practice listening for the beginning sound before a child can hear and distinguish other sounds within a word.
But this is a great place to start:
Click on the link below, print it, read the directions and let your child choose what they want to color with -crayons, colored pencils, markers, etc.
If you dont have a printer, free-hand this picture on a blank sheet of paper 🙂
